Church of the Ascension (Atlantic City, New Jersey)

Church of the Ascension was a historic church building at 1601 Pacific Avenue in Atlantic City, Atlantic County, New Jersey, United States. The church was built in 1893 and demolished in July 2017. At the time of its incorporation in 1854, Atlantic City, on Absecon Island, was seen as a prime location for the development of a resort town. Although by 1874 nearly 500,000 visitors would come to the city during its peak tourist season, its resident population was comparatively minimal at 1,043 in 1870 and 5,477 in 1880. In the earliest decades of the city's history, church services, like many of the amenities and attractions in the resort town, were exclusive to the summer months when the population swelled enough to fill scattered denominational churches to capacity. By the 1870s, devout Episcopalian residents, unsettled by the lack of year-round services at St. Mark's Episcopal Church, began a movement to permanently institute religious services in Atlantic City. When the 1879 summer tourist season began, year-round church services were instituted as Alfred M. Heston, historian and author of Heston’s Handbook: Atlantic City Illustrated, wrote: “The Church of the Ascension was organized as an all-the-year-round parish in 1879, principally through the efforts of Mrs. Francis W. Hemsley, the daughter of Bishop Underdonk and mother of Frederick Hemsley, present owner of the Hotel Br

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